Category Archives: Dad and The Boys

Anyone else ever heard of these guys? Pretty good driving punk n’ roll but not even close to being a household name in KBD land. About 5 years ago I saw this record listed on one of Mike Bastarache’s great set sale lists and it stuck in my craw as a record I had never heard of. And the band name was pretty funny and memorable. I forget how much he was asking but it must have been more than $10 or else I would have taken a chance on it. Fast forward to late 2004- I get an e-mail update list from good old Dr. Strange and while casually looking through it, there’s The Dad and The Boys 7” for cheap enough to “take a chance” on it. Got it in the mail a week later and have been digging it and been intrigued by it ever since. Like I said, I think it’s pretty good, pretty driving punk n’ roll. And it has an interesting vocal style which is always a plus in my book. [As a sidenote, I have a hang up about vocals- if a record has raw guitars but bad vocals it bugs me. It kind of wrecks it for me, like part of the “whole package” is missing. On the same hand, if a record has just decent guitars but a good, heartfelt singing style then I am more apt to give it another listen].

Unfortunately, the flipside which I have not posted drags on and is too mediocre for my ears. The sleeve is a plain white inner sleeve with cut out pictures pasted on the front and back of the sleeve (a la the Defnics 7″). Dad and The Boys had another 7″ a year earlier in 1985 called “Reagan In The White House” on the same label and with the same type of cut and paste sleeve. I found it on eBay for very cheap about a year ago but, unfortunately, both sides are mediocre and forgettable.

I assumed the band was from Nashville, TN since that’s where their label Wave Records was as stated on the back of the sleeve. But when I bought their other 7″ on eBay the seller said in the item description that the band was from the Detroit area. But, c’mon, what are the chances that an obscure band from Michigan would release two singles on an equally obscure label in Nashville? Maybe better chances than we think- I Googled the name of the studio (Muzican), and it turns out that there is a Muzican Studios in Canton, MI which is about halfway between Ann Arbor and Detroit. Hmmmm…

Enough stamp collecter obsessing- wherever the fuck they were from, I can sum up this record by saying that they’re yet another band that had only one shining moment and got it right on only one song. But is “Kamikaze Pilot” an Grade A all-time amazing classic? Um, no. But it’s at least a “Grade B” tune. But in terms of obscurity it’s Grade A. But you gotta divorce obscurity from musical quality because there’s too many records out there given attention for the wrong reasons- namely, because they’re very obscure. I think you gotta stay focused on how the music on an obscurity actually sounds. I think we’ve all seen too many eBay descriptions in ALL CAPS and with 50 exclamation points touting a record as immediately wanton because it’s “MEGA, MEGA RARE OBSCURITY!!!!”